Dept. of Amplification: Aziz Ansari’s “Half-Crazed Wonder”

This week in the magazine, Kelefa Sanneh writes about the comedian Aziz Ansari, who plays Tom Haverford on “Parks and Recreation” and Randy (or, “Raaaaaaaandy!”) in Judd Apatow’s “Funny People.” Subscribers can read the article in our digital edition; everyone can enjoy Ansari’s online video presence.

Sanneh writes that “one of Ansari’s greatest assets” is

a counterintuitive ability to observe ridiculous behavior and react not with simple mockery or exasperation, as many comedians would, but with half-crazed wonder. Rather than fuming at the world’s stupidity, he delights in its endless absurdity.

As an example, Sanneh points to Ansari’s bit about reacting to an interviewer asking him if he’s excited about “Slumdog Millionaire”:

I was, like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Are white people just psyched all the time? It’s, like, “Back to the Future”—that’s us! “The Godfather”—that’s us!…Every fuckin’ movie but “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Boyz n the Hood” is us!”

You can watch Ansari delighting in that and other absurdities in this interview with Jimmy Kimmel:

Although Ansari is Indian-American, “many of his favorite subjects—his heroes, and, therefore, his targets—are African-American,” Sanneh writes. One of his characters is the “swagga coach” Taavon, who, in this clip, consults Zach Galifianakis on his image:

Ansari got his television start on the MTV show “Human Giant,” spun off from a comedy night by the same name that he co-hosted at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. Sanneh writes that the show “evolved, in its second and final season, into a high-spirited seminar on how to push a premise past its logical conclusion.” Watch the high spirits in action:

And below is the first of the three-part Randy documentary, paid for by Apatow, that, Sanneh writes, “revealed Randy as a cheerful (if foulmouthed) nerd.”

(You can watch parts two and three, and more from Ansari, at FunnyOrDie.com.)